Shanghai street innovation

I saw this woman on the sidewalk in front of a restaurant in Shanghai in October. She may know nothing about user-centred design or innovation. But she’s living it, whether you like it or not.

She was cleaning in between the restaurant tables and needed a quick and cheap fix to help her work faster and better. So she taped a LED torch to her broom. Simple. Efficient. Rapid prototyping. Reality-driven. And moreover, her lit broom swaying across the sidewalk looked quite spectacular in the dark.

Now she can see what she’s doing. This smart lady is a living example of reality-driven design. An expert identifying a new need and coming up with the right answer. Innovative? Who cares? What matters is the solution. And she found and implemented it faster than I can say ‘innovation’.

If you meet her, tell her she’s an innovation star. By the way, she was really proud of her invention and I understand why.